Our 2014 Perfectly Personal™ Holiday Cards

This post is sponsored by Shutterfly. All opinions are mine. #ShutterflyHoliday

I’d like to go ahead and give myself a hearty and drawn-out pat on the back for having my holiday cards sitting right  here, ready to be addressed and mailed, all before Thanksgiving. I love planning and sending out Christmas cards, but it’s one of those details that I sometimes forget about in the holiday bustle—you’re putting up decorations, going to events, shopping for presents, then the first Christmas cards start trickling into your mailbox and you suddenly remember you haven’t gotten yours ready yet and is it too late to order some last minute? Are you with me here? Yeah. One day, when I’m a mature and organized adult, I’d like to be the sort who has all these details planned in advance, and it is pure luck that I have them ready this year. It feels good. So consider this post my humble brag that mine are ready to go (yay!!!) and a gentle push to get started on yours, too—why not get them done early and have a little more time and energy to enjoy the holidays with your family this year? Plus they make me feel all cheery and cozy and Christmasy, just looking at them. *happy emojis*

Our Christmas cards this year came from Shutterfly (we used Shutterfly cards last year too! you can see our 2013 cards HERE), and I love how they turned out (you can see the card design I chose and all the personalization options HERE). I used some of our most recent family pictures on them, and I love how the foil-stamped gold accents look with our photo colors. So shiny and glitzy and gorgeous. And it’s always so fun to play around with the little details to personalize the cards—I’m always a sucker for a scalloped edge, and although I didn’t want to change any of the colors on the card, that’s an option for most card designs, too. It really is fun to make little changes to make them feel mine.

My favorite feature of our holiday cards this year? Hands down, the matchy-matchy stationery accessories. I mean, an adorable holiday card is certainly enough to make me smile, but golly, if you’re going to make a full matching stations suite with personalized address labels and even personalized postage with our family picture on them to coordinate with our cards?! Done. Sold. Period. (And I will whisper a secret in your ear: I discovered an awesome perk of the personalized postage that perhaps even Shutterfly hasn’t realized—since the picture is small, it’s the perfect opportunity to use a family photo I really liked that wasn’t totally in focus. Sadly, this shot was just a bit too blurry to hang on our wall, or even use on the card itself, but for a little postage stamp? No one’s the wiser, it looks clear and sharp, and I got to use a picture I might not get to use elsewhere. It’s the small things, right?)

I love all the gold details. Of course I couldn’t resist slapping a picture of the kids on the back of our cards along with our personalized message, and the matching stickers with our name on them go perfectly with the cards. Aren’t we glad gold has come back in style? I admit, I was skeptical at first, but as with 99% of the trends I start out hating, I’ve stopped kicking against the pricks and joined the fold. The gold fold.

Truth be told, I hadn’t even considered throwing a Christmas party until I fell hard for these pretty party invitations. And now it appears I am throwing a Christmas party. Heaven help me.

Just admire with me. Look at how beautifully everything matches. It makes me happy.

And now I’m feeling a strong urge to bake some Christmas cookies. Can we skip past Thanksgiving and fast forward to Christmas please?